Screenplay writer and film director Vasan Bala, whose film "Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota" gained appreciation on its premiere at the ongoing 20th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, says the movie has been derived from his childhood memories of cinema and the neighbourhood.
"I wanted to take a story which is of the 1980s films that I have grown up watching and treat them in a very different manner that otherwise, we do not do in a regular film. Those are the films that I really loved as a kid and I wanted to revisit my childhood through this film, in that sense," Bala told IANS here on the sidelines of the film festival.
For Bala, building the world of the story was more important rather than the plot.
"I was investing more in the characters of the story. Somewhere my world as a child, growing up in Matunga (in Mumbai), having some constant conversation with my grandfather, building, and people around me - I wanted to incorporate all these in the film," the director said.
He added that his idea was to "then embark on a journey with them and making it more interesting with music, action, comedy and plot."
"Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota" revolves around a young man suffering from congenital insensitivity, a condition in which a person does not feel pain physically even if hurt brutally. With this medical condition he sets out on a journey to take revenge on someone and if his condition works in his favour or not, keeps the audience engaged in the film.
Music plays an important role in the narration of Bala's film.
Asked if he consciously chose not to use regular instrumentation in the music, he said: "Yes, it was a conscious thing of using music differently. There was a playlist going on in my mind when I was writing the film and during post-production. I used to keep sharing them with our music director Karan Kulkarni."
"Somewhere our taste matches. We knew that every sequence in the film, demands a different music to be infused and we started working towards it. Finally, all culminated in one."
The film features actor-filmmaker Mahesh Manjrekar, debutant actor Abhimanyu Dassani and Radhika Madan among others.
Asked if directing such an array of actors was difficult, Bala said: "Those characters were difficult to portray so we went through a lot of reading sessions and talked about these characters, the world of the film well in advance. That made the whole shooting process easier."
The film projects it's female characters in a substantial way.
Did Bala try to establish gender equality in this form?
"I do not think that I tried to do it with an agenda but if it is coming organically, it is good. I do not want to force-feed it to the audience. I think a lot of time, male filmmakers tend to become more patronizing when it comes to women characters in a film."
He asserted that women are inherently strong.
"Just that they are not strong exactly like a man, they are strong differently. The idea is not to ape each other but finding the space to project their strength in the right manner. I have grown up around strong women but they are not intensely strong all the time. and there is nothing wrong to be vulnerable. Every human has their shades of emotions. My idea was to project them that way," he added.
--IANS
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